The RAND Corporation was commissioned to publish a report titled, "War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable," in which it describes its assessment of possible war between the US and China in the Pacific in both 2015 and in 2025.

The report's introduction summarized its findings, stating:

Premeditated war between the United States and China is very unlikely, but the danger that a mishandled crisis could trigger hostilities cannot be ignored. Thus, while neither state wants war, both states' militaries have plans to fight one. As Chinese anti-access and area-denial (A2AD) capabilities improve, the United States can no longer be so certain that war would follow its plan and lead to decisive victory. This analysis illuminates various paths a war with China could take and their possible consequences.

The report makes an attractive concession to possible Chinese politicians and business leaders (and their counterparts throughout the rest of Asia) who may read the report and be tempted to take it at face value, claiming that war with China, even today, would be costly for the US, and that the window of opportunity for a decisive victory over China will likely be closed come 2025.

London has appointed an ambassador to Iran for the first time since 2011, when the British embassy in Tehran was stormed by students protesting against Western sanctions.

Britain named Nicholas Hopton, the current charge d'affaires in Tehran, as its ambassador to the Islamic Republic. Hopton has previously served as the British ambassador to Qatar and Yemen.

The move signals a continued thawing in diplomatic relations after Iran and the P5+1 group signed an historic deal curbing Iran's nuclear capabilities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Iran has announced the appointment of Hamid Baeidinejad as the country's new envoy to London.

What has just taken place in Hangzhou, China, is of immense geoeconomic importance. Beijing from the start treated the G20 very seriously; this was designed as China's party, not the declining West's. And much less Washington's.

Outlining the agenda for the discussions, President Xi Jinping went straight to the point also geopolitically, as he set the tone: "The outdated Cold War mentality should be discarded. We urgently need to develop an inclusive, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable new security concept."

Compare it with Xi's so-called "four prescriptions" - "innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive" - necessary to re-boost the world economy.

Acting like the de facto World Statesman-in-Chief, Xi then proceeded at the summit opening to introduce a quite ambitious package - the result of excruciating planning for months in the run-up to Hangzhou.

The package is designed to propel the global economy back to growth and at the same time install more made in China-friendly rules for global economic architecture and governance.

The target could not be more ambitious: to smash mounting anti-trade and anti-globalization sentiment, especially across the West (from Brexit to Trump), simultaneously pleasing his select audience - arguably the most significant gathering of world leaders in China's history - yet at the same time, in the long run, aiming at prevailing over US-led Western dominance for good.

That's a predictable but still remarkable turnaround for China, which benefited like any other nation from globalization - with growth over the past three decades mostly propelled by foreign direct investment and a deluge of exports.

Yet now geoeconomics has reached an extremely worrying zone of turbulence. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989 - and of "history" itself, according to academic simpletons - it's never been so dire. Greed led globalization to be "defeated" by inequality. In a nutshell, low inflation - due to global competition - led to the proverbial "expansionary" monetary policies, which inflated housing, education and health care, squeezing the middle class and allowing unlimited wealth flowing to a 1 percent minority of asset owners.

Yet even in de-acceleration, China was responsible for more than 25 percent of global economic growth in 2015. It remains the key global turbine - while at the same time carrying the self-attributed burden of being the representative of the Global South in global economic governance.

China's outbound investment surged 62 per cent to a record US$100 billion in the first seven months of 2016, according to China's Ministry of Commerce. But there's a problem, which economists have dubbed "asymmetric investment environment": China remains more closed than other BRICS members to foreign investment, especially in service sectors.

Turkey says it has killed 30 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants during airstrikes in northern Iraq.

According to a statement released by the Turkish army's General Staff, two militant positions were hit in Iraq's Qandil Mountains.

The statement noted that several high ranking PKK members were among those killed.

Syrian army soldiers and the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement are coordinating the final steps for launching a large-scale joint anti-terrorism operations in Quneitra province in Southern Syria, military sources said Monday.

"The Syrian army and Hezbollah fighters have been working on a joint plan to end militancy in Southern Syria, particularly near the Golan Heights," the sources said.

"Hezbollah has deployed a large number of its forces at Quneitra passage which has connected the Syrian territories to the occupied Golan," they added.

After being poorly received at the airport ahead of the G20 Summit, President Obama created a stir at the summit threatening "consequences" against China while in the country as a guest.

On Monday, President Barack Obama leveled a severe warning against what he views as China's continued misbehavior in the South China Sea saying that there will be "consequences" if Beijing refuses to back down from its increasingly aggressive behavior that he says is worrying its neighbors.

"Part of what I've tried to communicate to President Xi (Jinping) is that the United States arrives at its power, in part, by restraining itself," said Obama in a CNN interview. "You know, when we bind ourselves to a bunch of international norms and rules, it's not because we have to, it's because we recognize that, over the long-term, building a strong international order is in our interest. And, I think, over the long-term, it will be in China's interests, as well."

British Prime Minister Theresa May and her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, appear to be split over Saudi Arabia's alleged war crimes in Yemen, where the Gulf kingdom is intervening in a deadly civil war. The PM raised concerns over the Yemen conflict with Saudi Arabian diplomats at the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China. However, May's intervention is at odds with the foreign secretary, who said on Monday there is no evidence of war crimes in Yemen and so Britain can legally continue selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes in Yemen in late March 2015 and imposed an aerial and naval blockade on the crisis-ridden state. The Saudi-led coalition had hoped to influence the outcome of Yemen's bloody civil war. The military campaign, which has caused large-scale bloodshed and human suffering, targeted Yemen's Houthi population and a number of allied insurgent groups who support former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The intervention has been described as a humanitarian catastrophe by human rights experts, including key United Nations officials. By July 2015, the UN had described the humanitarian situation in the war-torn state as a "Level 3" emergency - the highest emergency ranking it ascribes.

Sources told the Independent that May was able to raise human rights issues with the Gulf kingdom because Britain and Saudi Arabia have a "strong relationship."

An expected visit by ICC delegation could increase the risk of Israeli officials being tried for war crimes. Israel has agreed to allow the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to send a delegation to Israel and the occupied territories, it was revealed at the weekend, in a step that could dramatically increase the risk of Israeli officials being tried for war crimes.

Emmanuel Nahshon, a foreign ministry spokesman, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israel had agreed to the visit in principle, though the "when and how" were still under discussion. The ICC's move comes as human rights groups have harshly criticised Israel for closing investigations into dozens of allegations that its military broke the laws of war during an attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014. The Hague prosecutors are reportedly interested in examining how effective Israel's legal mechanisms are in investigating allegations of war crimes.

Under the terms of its founding statute, the ICC could take over jurisdiction of such probes if it is persuaded that Israel is unable or unwilling to conduct credible investigations itself. So far, only three Israeli soldiers have been indicted on a relatively minor charge - of looting - even though Israel's 51-day offensive, named Protective Edge, in July and August 2014 resulted in some 2,250 Palestinian deaths. The vast majority were civilians, including 551 children.

The Philippines is "gravely concerned" that China might be planning to build an artificial island on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, as Beijing has decided to disregard the recent international court decision that barred China from the area. The ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on July 12 said that no one country had sovereign rights over activity in the Scarborough Shoal, after The Hague court ruled against China in the maritime dispute.

China refused to recognize the ruling and over the last few days have [has] been increasing their [its] presence over the shoal that is just of few rocks poking above the sea. "The presence of so many ships, other than coast guard in the area is cause for grave concern," Philippines Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Sunday after his country's air force plane allegedly detected four Chinese coast guard ships, two barge-like vessels and two suspected troop ships near the shoal Saturday.

The minister noted that earlier this year the Chinese tried to bring in dredging barges to turn Scarborough into an artificial island. That attempt, Lorenzana said, was dissuaded by the United States. "If they try to construct anything in Scarborough it will have far reaching adverse effect on the security situation," he added, pointing out that Manila summoned the Chinese ambassador for an explanation.

In February 1946, George Kennan sent back from Moscow the "Long Telegram," an analysis of the sources of Soviet foreign policy, which came to serve as the intellectual foundation of the containment policy the United States pursued during the Cold War. The telegram landed in the midst of a reassessment of American Soviet policy as the hopes born of the grand alliance against Hitler's Germany that the allies would continue to cooperate in peacetime crashed against the harsh reality of Soviet suspicion and hostility.

As John Gaddis notes in his biography of Kennan, his telegram did not bring about a shift in U.S. policy but it crystallized the thinking of senior administration officials. "It was," Gaddis writes, "the geopolitical equivalent of a medical X-ray, penetrating beneath alarming symptoms to yield at first clarity, then comprehension, and finally by implication a course of treatment."

Today, we need a similar analysis, for we find ourselves at a similar juncture. Two years ago, Russia's annexation of Crimea and destabilization of eastern Ukraine irreversibly dashed all the assumptions that had guided America's Russia policy since the demise of the Soviet Union a generation ago. No longer is it possible to maintain that Russia is being integrated, albeit slowly and fitfully, into the West and, for that reason, is a suitable partner for addressing global issues. Moreover, Russia itself is no longer interested in integration, if it ever was. Rather, it presents itself as a unique construct, intent on challenging the U.S.-led world order across a broad front, including hard geopolitical matters like Ukraine, as well as the values that animate Western society.